Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I got home from Europe3 just before Christmas and have not yet got through the mountain of letters which accumulated in my long absence, but I want to skip a few hundred unanswered letters and drop a line to you, because last night I picked up the Yale Review4 and read your article5 on Mark Twain6.
I knew Mark Twain during my first year in New York2, when he was living on lower Fifth Avenue and spent most of his time in bed. Because I knew the man himself, Mr. Brooks7' book8 has always seemed to me one of the most glaring pieces of misapprehension that ever happened in a world full of mistakes. Mr. Brooks simply has no idea of what the real man was like; and I am afraid the imaginary Mark Twain, Mr. Brooks creates, would never have written "Huckleberry Finn"9. I don't know Mr. Brooks personally, but I have always heard good things about his scholarship and integrity. When he wrote about Mark Twain, he simply made a bad choice of subject, and I suspect from the general tone of his book that he could never have understood old Mr. Clemens at all: and if he had chanced to know him, I am afraid the intercourse would have been a series of mild, but painful, shocks!
This letter, you will understand, is confidential. It is not for me to contradict
Mr.
Brooks. But it is a great relief to me that some one has boldly refused to swallow
this sentimental view of Mr. Clemens as a blighted genius, and you were certainly
the man to do it. You could do it in the course of your usual activities; while I
would have had to step so far out of mine, that it would have looked almost as if
I
had some personal grudge,.
so I really feel very grateful to you. If Mr. Brooks
could have seen that old lion in his bed telling stories to three or four young
people, if he could have seen this for five minutes, he could never have written his
book.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1298.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1298
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- William Lyon Phelps 1
- Date letter was written
- February 17, 1936
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- William Lyon Phelps Papers (YCAL MSS 678), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Person Annotations
Phelps, William Lyon (1865-1943). American critic and professor. Born of an old New England family, Phelps grew up in New Haven, CT, where he received his BA (1887) and PhD (1891) from Yale University. He began teaching English and European literature at Yale in 1892, teaching one of the first courses in the modern novel. He also lectured widely, wrote a regular newspaper column, and published many critical essays. Cather disagreed with many of his ideas but responded courteously when he wrote to correct her astronomical terminology in “Two Friends” (1932).
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1835-1910) (“Mark Twain”). American author and lecturer. Born in Florida, MO, to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens, Samuel Clemens first worked as a typesetter and editorial assistant for the Hannibal Western Union. While working as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1863 he started to use the pseudonym “Mark Twain,” drawn from his work as a riverboat pilot. In 1869 his first novel, Innocents Abroad, was published; Clemens went on to write twenty-eight books and many short stories. Willa Cather read Clemens’s work and appreciated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but disparaged Joan of Arc (1896) as “thoroughly stupid” (Courier, 5 October 1895). Cather also knew Clemens during her first year in New York, and in 1905 she attended his 70th birthday celebration held at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City (#1298).
Brooks, Van Wyck (1886-1963). American literary critic and cultural
historian. Born in Plainfield, NJ, and educated at Harvard
University, Brooks was a prolific author of books on American literature and
culture, focusing especially on the legacies of Puritanism and on
nineteenth-century American literature. The Flowering of
New England, 1815-1865 (1936) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
history in 1937. Followed by New England: Indian Summer,
1865-1915 (1940) and three additional volumes about American
literature through the early twentieth century, the five volumes were
collected as Makers and Finders: A History of the Writer
in America, 1800-1915 (1952). In 1940 Brooks wrote Cather about
Archibald MacLeish’s book The Irresponsibles (1940),
and she agreed with his assessment of it. Shortly thereafter, she wrote to
correct his assertion in Indian Summer that she had
edited the letters of Sarah Wyman Whitman. It is not clear whether their
acquaintance went beyond this brief correspondence.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Yale Review
"Mark Twain," Yale Review (1936) by William Lyon Phelps
The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920) by Van Wyck Brooks
Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark (Samuel Clemens) Twain
